Reviews with content warning for Racism - A Torch Against the Night

Honestly one of my favorite books of the series, a lot of twists I wasnt expecting. Read it in about 4 days but it wasn’t cause it was short or anything its just one of those can’t put down books :D 10/10

Content Warnings

nikspandya's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I have never read a second book in a series more perfect than this one. The pacing is perfect. Nothing happens conveniently, it all truly ties together and feels organic. The characters and the settings are amazing and three dimensional. Heck, even the villains are amazing (in their villainy of course)!! I think that this book is inappropriately categorized as YA. Maybe the characters are young, but the content is NOT. I can definitely feel the shift of YA to adult fantasy between the first and second books. I am so so excited to read books 3 and 4 in this series and highly recommend this series to everyone, literally everyone.

Content Warnings

rinku's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Now, after reading the whole An Ember in the Ashes series, I can say that A Torch Against the Night is my favorite book of the series. There’s so much plot and not one moment to catch a breath since the atmosphere is constantly tense and threatening.

After the events of the first book, this book instantly starts with a great action sequence: Laia and Elias are on the run from the empire, trying to flee the city and finding a way to free Laia’s brother from prison to continue the fight against the empire. Besides them, we get a third POV, namely Helene’s perspective. This was great for two reasons: One, it was good to have a POV inside the empire, and two, this gave her character so much depth and made me like her so much. She gets the mission to hunt down and kill Elias, or otherwise her family will die. Hence, for all of them, the stakes are so high. Additionally, I liked all of the three POVs and it was so hard to see how much they were struggling with themselves and their missions.

What made this book especially great was the plot and the story. The whole story is just so dark, brutal, and often leaves you with a hopeless feeling. The pacing was amazing as well; I was first scared that Elias’ and Laia’s travel would be boring but oh boy, it wasn’t. There is always something often unpredictable happening that makes you want to continue reading.

Particularly towards the ending, so many shocking things happen, leading to more suffering for our characters:

It’s revealed that Keenan is the Nightbringer who thus betrayed Laia. Helene also fails her mission, leading to Marcus killing her whole family which was just so sad. Elias dies in the end as well, trying to save Darin on his own. He then becomes the soul catcher and gets revived through this

. With all of those conflicts, you just want to know how the story will continue and how the characters will deal with them in the future.

What I also really like is the writing itself. With all the violence happening, <i>Tahir</i> creates a constant tense atmosphere where you have to worry for your favorite characters. Furthermore, everything feels so real and the settings are just so great.

I mostly said what I think about the characters above, but I find it so amazing how Laia never gives up. When

Izzi and Keenan came

, I was a bit scared that we would get a love triangle, but we didn’t. I also start to like Helene quite a lot and I just wanted to hug her at some moments. Besides this, I can’t stress enough how pure evil and brutal the villains of the story are, creating a true threat for our characters.

In summary, A Torch Against the Night was my first five star read in months, and for a good reason – the plot is engaging, the characters are amazing, and the writing and settings create a great atmosphere.

Content Warnings